Surprisingly, if your company is typical, you have too many road blocks in front of the customer that will need to be removed in order for your company to be a smart marketer.

Let's go through a typical scenario. Your branding campaign has been developed correctly. You’ve gathered current market intelligence from your market universe, tested the messaging to make sure it tackles real issues that resonate with your market and now you roll out your tactics.

(For the sake of this discussion, we’ll lump all brand marketing tactics into one bucket we’ll call “communications.”)

But unknown to you, several things are waiting to trip you on the way to the bank. First, your communications are unfortunately not user-centered.

So, your communications go out, get your market interested, but then defeat your prospective customers because they can’t figure out how to take the next step, or even worse they haven't even been asked to take a next step. One common example of this: your website address is disguised as an obscure graphic design element that is so non-obvious, if the reader needed to find your website to save their life, they’d be flat-lined before they figured it out.

Now let’s stop and take a side trip for a minute. You know, of course, that a high percentage of prospective customers will want more information than you're able to cram into your communications. Here's where your website comes in. But, if your market can’t readily find your website address in your communications they’ll move on and forget about your company. Road block number one.

Second example: even worse, all contact information is so buried in the bowels of your communications that it would take a forensic scientist to find it. So even if the prospective customer is determined enough to find out more by calling your company, calling your distribution channel, or trying to contact whatever other mechanism you have in place to get your product or service to market, you’ve frustrated them again. No phone number, or if it is visible and you market throughout the country it’s not a toll-free number. Road block number two.

Just remember, the harder you make it for your market to get more information or complete a transaction, the fewer who will. Now, that may be a strategy you employ to weed out the casually interested, but, and it’s a "big butt," this strategy will also chase away the casually interested, high volume user. For example, a large potential buyer sees your communication, is the exact type of buyer you want to rope in, but doesn’t have time to fight through the road blocks your company has inadvertently put in their way. What happens? They do a double clickout.

Back to our nightmare scenarios. Next, your determined, interested prospect tries to Google to your website except your website was created by a techie who constructed your site using frames. So, your wonderful website placed very low in the search engine rankings because search engines can't readily index frames-based sites. Now your determined prospect has to click through 26 pages of Google listings before they finally spot your website. (Ah, success. Now to just get a little more information.)

(What the?) The prospect who simply wants to get enough information to make a positive decision about your product or service now discovers that you’ve created a website that looks like you’re a frustrated movie director. You have a thirty second animated intro leading into your home page with no means to bypass it, and your site navigation method uses clever icons that could double as hieroglyphics. (Is that a telephone or an inkblot? What does that green box mean? Aarrgghh. All I want to do is find the information I came here for.)

What if your website is an e-commerce site meaning you are using your site to actually sell something? You went to the expense to attract your prospect to your site only to make it hard for them to buy. (Like how, you say?) In one recent example, we received a very nice looking html e-mail invitation to a conference. We clicked on a link to get more information, but unfortunately, the link was dead. Road block number one. We finally got to the registration page on the site, had our credit card ready in anticipation, but the site required that we register for a free login on the site before we could actually buy the seat at the conference. Road block number two. We filled in our e-mail and a password, hit "submit" and promptly got an error message. Ouch. That wasn’t fun. Road block number three. But, we tried it again after remembering that we didn't just ride in with a truckload of turnips. This time it seems to work because we don’t get an error message, but we also do not get any confirmation that our registration worked. So, we try to login and get an error message - our login is not recognized. Road block number four. So, we try two more times to get a login and fail both times and now we’re totally frustrated. Road blocks five and six. Now, we go back to the website page for registration and read the fine print that says that a login will not be valid for 24 hours after registration. (Ouch. You have someone who is interested, ready to buy, but you require them to wait for 24 hours before they can actually purchase? Most people will say, "forget it" about now.) But, in our case we have actually waited 36 hours between our registration attempts so we can only conclude that the site hasn’t been thoroughly tested and is going to act as a barrier to our becoming a customer. Back to the event registration html e-mail - ah ha, there is the name of someone to call. We promptly dial the number only to get a voice mail. “I'm sorry. I'm away from my desk. Please leave a message and I'll call you back.” Road block number seven. Now we’re steaming realizing how much time we have wasted trying to spend money with this organization and we’ve been thwarted at every turn.

Lest you think we made up this scenario, it actually was a real experience trying to sign up for an event put on by the second largest church in the US. They have a “communications team.” Sadly, the communications seem to be designed to only go one way. Out. Most people would have quit after the first road block and with each successive additional road block the remaining customers would be cut by half.

And finally, the all-time classic. We get the right extension for the department, the line rings, and a mechanical voice comes on the line, “Your call has been answered by an automatic voice answering service. Unfortunately, the person you have dialed does not subscribe to this service. Good bye.” Click, dial tone. Not even a “have a nice day.” The ultimate road block.

And, speaking about barriers, if your company ever, ever does business with customers by telephone, your company’s automated answering system is costing you way more money than it’s saving.

Here’s another scenario. We called a local business to try to buy their products. We dialed the number on their ad only to get the ubiquitous automated answering system. Road block number one. “If you know your party’s extension you can dial it at any time. For a directory of extensions please press 3.” Boy, this is a lot more work than we wanted but we press 3 and wait. No listing in the entire directory sounds like it’s the right one. Road block number two. (Now what?) Redial and listen to the entire directory again. (Ah, dial 0 for assistance. I’ll do that.) Next we get a recording, “Thanks for calling XYZ Company. We’re unable to take your call. Please leave your name and phone number and a brief message and we’ll return your call.” Road block number three. Okay, except we never get the return phone call. Road block number four.

Or, how about the surly receptionist, the unhelpful sales desk, the person who knows nothing about the product in which you’re interested but they do know they want to get rid of you so they can go on break? Forget about the message they send to your market about your brand. Consider how many customers do a double click out as a result of these barriers and never come back.

If you think these examples don’t fit your organization do what the smart companies do - find out. Try some mystery shopping. In other words, have test your own company. This is the technique used by many retailers to find out how well their stores perform for customers. Mystery shoppers are nothing more than people who try to get information or buy or test other important aspects of your company. What do the majority of people want when they read your ads, respond to your direct mail, click on a link in your e-mail or go to your website? Then, how difficult is it for them to get what they want?

This principle is the essence of the science of usability. At first, technology companies started employing usability testing because they found out they were creating products that totally stumped their end-users. This was in the era when companies expected customers to learn the company’s way instead of making their products work the way the customer thinks. (Remember the terms “intuitive” and “user-friendly?”) To see how far they were from giving consumers easy-to-use products, companies conducted usability tests to observe actual users trying to use the product to accomplish common tasks. Eventually, the practice of usability crept into communications, like websites. How easy is it for a visitor to your website to accomplish a typical task? Just remember, it’s not about you - it doesn’t matter how well you or your tech department or that clever Flash developer or even your boss likes your website if your customers have to struggle to figure it out.

And, while we’re at it, if your company makes products that need even a modest amount of installation let’s talk about user manuals for a minute. A very large computer printer company used to have simple to use, easy to understand installation manuals for their printers. Then, inexplicably, management apparently decided that excess employees could create the manuals. (Yeow! Five hours later and two calls to tech support later and the stupid printer is still not working.)

If you frustrate your customer when they are trying to use your product or service for the first time, you can bet they won’t be excited about going through the experience again. Make sense?

So, what kind of barriers does your company put in front of your customers? How easy is it for them to find out how to take the next step from your marketing communications? How easy is it for them to actually take the next step? How easy is it for them to get information from your website? How easy is it for them to actually talk to a real person who can help them?

As we said, everything just discussed has a direct impact on the brand impression you make on your customer. Is your tagline something like, “We’re in it for you” and then your processes make it obvious that you’re not? Do you take the marketing position that you’re the best service company and then put three layers of obstacles in front of customers trying to get service from you? Do you try to position your company above the dog-eat-dog, price war, competitive fray and then have the worst customer touch among your competitors?

Find out. Do a simple test yourself. Call your company. Have your neighbor read your communications and try to follow your “call to action.” Ask your customers anonymously how easy it is to do business with you. Then make a formal effort to check your “easy” rating quarterly. Word of caution: don’t do this yourself. Avoid the bias that will skew results and have someone else do it. If you’re a major corporation and you’re not using a usability group, find one. If you’re a smaller company that wants to get serious about out-marketing your competition, this is one place you can make it or break it. Buy books on usability, read up on it, hire an expert to help you set up your own usability efforts.

Remember, marketing is meaningless if your follow-through makes it difficult for customers to do business with you.

Brand Oops Now, here’s another real life example of a brand failing to be consistent with their brand strategy. Alaska Airlines covers the west coast like a blanket and recently started expanding to destinations on the east coast. The airline has for decades been known for creating a better experience for their passengers. But recently, they advised their best passengers, those who fly the most miles with them, in clinical, no nonsense terms, that benefits would be pared and that in some cases they would not be able to secure first class upgrades until three days before their flights. Hmm. So, if the notion behind loyalty programs is to treat frequent flyers a little better, why take the this-is-what-it-is approach to tell them you’re going to treat them a little worse? Shouldn’t there be at least some nice language to soothe the angry beast? So we promptly dispatched a letter to the local Alaska account executive (who, incidentally, is a great example of how to communicate a top service brand but that's for another newsletter.) A few weeks later we get a call from an Alaska customer service type who explains that the airline is losing money and needs to change its business model. (Okay, so let’s see, you’re the airline with better service, had a record string of profitable quarters before the recent recession and now you want to be Southwest. Uh, seems that there are already a bunch of Southwest’s out there and your model was why you set records for so many years.) Unfortunately, the airline thought it was all so logical, but remember what we have said over and over? Logic is how we think but not how we act. Our actions are directed by emotions. When you say that your brand is about giving people better service, don't use no-nonsense language to tell them you're making their benefits worse. It "feels" like you've been lying to them. Oops. Brand disconnect.

When your alligator brand messaging is backed up by chicken follow-through, you’re toast. Your market will feel like it’s been duped.

Make information clear, ensure that your follow-through has been tested and proven, deliver on the promises your customers have been given and regularly do an assessment of the ease with which your customers can do business with your company.

And, while we’re on that subject, Luminor is not only a brand communications company providing measurable breakthrough PR, advertising and electronic strategies and tactics, we’re also usability experts.

For more information, go to our website at www.luminor.com, call us in Seattle at 206.956.0300 or in Southern California at 949.589.2478, or send an e-mail to info@luminor.com. Since we’re a smaller firm, our phones are often busy and you may have to leave a voice mail, but now you know that upfront.

Take care and market smart. It’s tough out there but your company can win.

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